By the People

It was a good night for the candidates we endorsed.

In the governors’ races, four of the five candidates we endorsed won election, but in the Florida race, Republican turned Democrat David Jolly lost to Rep. Byron Donalds, who had the endorsement of term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis. Donalds currently represents Florida’s 19^th Congressional District, and winning that statewide race in 2021gave him name-familiarity especially for conservative voters and helped him to prevail in this year’s race for governor.

Meanwhile, the voters approved of our endorsements of four exceptional governor candidates: Amy Acton in Ohio, Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, and in what was the most-watched governor race in the country, Gina Hinojosa in Texas.

In all ten House races where we picked candidates to watch, our endorsed candidates won. Denise Powel and Susie Lee won in Nebraska’s 2^nd and 3^rd districts, respectively. Rebecca Bennett won in New Jersey District 7. Tom Suozzi prevailed in New York’s 3^rd district. Greg Landsman won the election to represent Ohio’s 1^st District. Carried along by the seismic political shift in Texas, Bobby Pulido won there in the 15^th District. Also in Texas, Henry Cuellar won in the 28^th District and Vicente Gonzalez won in the 34^th District. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won re-election to Washington state’s 3^rd District seat, and Elaine Luria won in Virginia’s 2^nd District.

As of this writing, there are still two Senate races that have not been called, although our endorsed candidates, Mary Peltola in Alaska and Scott Colom in Mississippi, seem likely to have the most votes when the final counting is finished.

We had endorsed Dan Osborn, who ran as an Independent in Nebraska. He was not successful. Our endorsed candidate in Florida, Angie Nixon, lost to incumbent Republican Ashley Moody, who may have been helped to win the seat by voters who backed Byron Donalds in the race for governor.

Every one of the remaining ten Senate candidates who had our endorsement won election. As a group, these winning candidates are an impressive “caucus” of new and incumbent Democratic senatorial talent and political power. We look forward to following them in action. Going to the Senate following our endorsement are:

• Jon Ossoff in Georgia (incumbent)
• Jeff Merkley in Oregon (incumbent)
• Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan
• Sherrod Brown in Ohio
• Roy Cooper in North Carolina
• Josh Turek in Iowa
• James Talarico in Texas
• Troy Jackson in Maine
• Adam Hamilton in Kansas
• Annie Adrews in South Carolina

Election day went smoothly. The anticipated shenanigans did not occur. We did not hear any reports of armed federal agents showing up to intimidate voters at the polling places. Mail-in voting was accomplished without threatened attempts to seize ballots or voting machines.

This time, at least, the voters showed up in numbers too big to ignore. The election was not thrown into disarray. The republic held. Democracy has not been wrecked—so far.

Unhappy Republicans have already signaled their intention to do what they can to deprive Democrats of success and to make it difficult for them to deliver on the promises they ran on in this election.

The 2028 presidential campaign is underway. Democrats especially will be at risk of losing focus. For them, the next two years must not be lost in the mire of oversight investigations at the expense of legislating measures to improve the lives of the people. It will not be easy. It will in some, if not most, cases require reaching across the aisle to find the votes needed to override executive veto.

At the same time, corruption must be brought to light and curtailed. Where laws have been ignored and where the Constitution has been violated, there must be consequences. Corruption was an issue in this election, and the voters spoke loudly. The business of corruption-as-usual and obscene profiting from public office must end and be purged from government.

The belief in self-government through voting is ingrained in the character of us Americans. It is a belief that does not belong to any political party. This election is testament to an enduring faith that threat or intimidation of voters or attempts to divide the people and set them against each other won’t shake. It won’t surrender to bribery or lies. This year the voters showed up and claimed what was theirs.

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Some other stuff for later,